Happy Easter to those who celebrate it. Di, our host for Share Your World has provided some holiday related questions this week.

1. Do you celebrate the Easter holiday and if not, do you have an alternative?

Well that depends what you mean by celebrate. We don’t attend any religious services but we do mark the days with some traditional Easter activities.

2. Do you exchange gifts or have a traditional meal?

Naomi and I exchanged cards and chocolate. I made hot cross buns, not a great success this year. We had shop buns for breakfast on Good Friday and boiled eggs on Saturday, Normally we do the boiled eggs and chocolate giving on Sunday but this year Naomi needed to go out early so we changed the routine and had the chocolate on Friday and the breakfast on Saturday. We had fish and chips for dinner on Good Friday too.

3. How many Easter Eggs (or alternative) did your receive/give?

I gave Naomi a chocolate squirrel and a colleague at the Visitor Centre a chocolate Bilby. Naomi gave me a small box of Cadbury Roses and got us a larger box of Cadbury Favourites to share.

4.  Was Easter a Bank Holiday in your country or did you have to work this weekend?

Good Friday and Easter Monday are Public Holidays everywhere in Australia. In Tasmania we also have Easter Tuesday, a curious holiday observed by government offices and banks but hardly anyone else. Schools would probably be closed but it’s school holidays anyway. We don’t go out to work but Naomi did go to her volunteer job on Sunday. She volunteers at the Don River Railway and they were having a special Easter event so she went in for a couple of hours to help out. She doesn’t usually go there to work on weekends but this week was different.

Gratitude:

Last Tuesday there was a major fire at Don River Railway. It was first noticed at around four in the morning by a volunteer who was camping overnight in the carriage shed. His quick action in alerting the fire services prevented more damage but as it was they lost the carpenters shed with all the tools and spare parts and two historic carriages that were being restored.

We are grateful first of all that nobody was hurt, and secondly that the damage was not a lot worse. None of the locomotives were damaged and nor were the carriages in the adjacent carriage shed or the plans and blueprints that were stored there.

While it is tragic to lose two irreplaceable pieces of rollingstock they will rebuild the shed and replace what can be replaced. The railway was up and running the next day for cruise ship passengers and the Easter event went ahead as planned. Some functions held in the carriage shed have had to be cancelled until power and water can be restored but everyone involved in the railway is determined to get things back on track as soon as possible.